


Getaway Car

by selahexanimo



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4484525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selahexanimo/pseuds/selahexanimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kuvira is a runaway bride; Suyin drives the getaway car.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getaway Car

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day #1 of Avatar Femslash Week. Theme: modern AU.

Halfway down the aisle, Kuvira wonders what the hell she’s doing.

This isn’t the first time she’s asked herself this question, but it’s the first time she realizes that she might be in the wrong. The courthouse windows are leaden with an early morning drizzle; Baatar Jr. fidgets before the justice of the peace like a bobble-headed novelty toy. A few guests – there are a full dozen of them, all Baatar’s; she doesn’t know where he found them – are turning in their seats, looking for her. Or looking, rather, for the bride.

Kuvira doesn’t feel like a bride. She feels like she came here for something else and stumbled into a stranger’s wedding. She’s dressed in an indifferent pale green suit, wearing pumps with worn down heels and scuff marks on the toes. Her mouth tastes sour and furred; she’d spent her bachelorette party of one drinking cheap beer and watching soap operas. One and a half cases, and she barely got buzzed. Her own fault, of course. She hadn’t been trying.

She stands in her scuffed shoes and old suit, staring at the skittish back of her fiance (soon to be her husband in three, two–) and realizes that she can’t do it anymore.

How, she wonders, did she even get this far?

Baatar turns, then, the ceiling lights bright in his glasses. “Kuvira?” he says, and everyone looks at her then, finally free to stare outright, hungry for a glimpse of the tardy bride.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You’re a good man, Baatar.”

And then she turns on her heel and walks out.

A part of her wants to leave of the courthouse straightaway, but screw it if she’s going to leave her overnight bag behind.

oOo

It’s early and gross outdoors; Kuvira doesn’t expect to meet anyone. And yet, when she steps outside, she finds herself face-to-face with the last woman she expects to see: her fiance’s mother, Suyin Beifong.

Suyin is sitting in her car – a glossy thing, modeled on last century’s Satomobile – with the windows rolled down and a cigarette burning between her fingers. She looks up, when Kuvira appears on the sidewalk. Her face is hollow and tired.

“You need an umbrella,” she calls, and for a long moment, Kuvira can’t say anything back. She stands in the drizzle, clenching the straps of her backpack, stomach doing stupid, twisty things, gymnastics that should have stayed behind in primary school.

“Where’s Junior?” Suyin asks, finally.

This time, Kuvira manages to speak. “Inside.”

Suyin lifts an eyebrow. “You didn’t go through with it, did you?”

Kuvira is getting over her surprise, loosening up. She shrugs. “It’s better this way.” The words hang between them. “I’m sorry for it,” she adds.

Dating Baatar Jr. has had its side effects: Kuvira has begun to slide around the truth, spouting words she expects people are waiting to hear instead of what she wants to say. Apologies, confessions, concessions – she’s having a hard time recognizing herself, these days.

“Don’t be sorry,” says Suyin. Her tone is biting. She pulls her hand back into the car and crushes her cigarette in the ashtray. “Get in.”

Surprising, when the last thing Suyin ever said to her was, “Get out.” Kuvira climbs into the passenger seat and drops her bag between her feet.

“You look nice,” Suyin says, absently. “The green.”

“You said you weren’t going to come.”

Suyin lets the accusation slide. “Where are you headed?” she asks. “Home?”

“To the airport.” Kuvira hadn’t even considered it as a destination until now. But her epiphany in the courthouse is starting to spill its borders – she is realizing that she can’t do much of her old life, anymore.

The drive to the interstate passes in silence. Suyin takes the ramp too fast; they skid out in an arc of rainwater.

“I’m sorry,” Kuvira says. Her cheek is pressed against the window, her breath misting the glass. “I’ve fucked up your family. I didn’t mean it.” She digs blunt nails into her palm. “Much as that’s worth.”

Suyin exhales. Her fingers twitch on the steering wheel; she looks like she wants another cigarette. The car reeks of smoke and curdled air freshener; the ashtray spills disintegrating butts. Kuvira has never seen Suyin smoke so much before. She eyes the ashtray sidelong, like a car wreck.

“You made a mistake,” Suyin says, voice tight. “We all do.”

She does not sound as if she means it.

Kuvira’s chest tightens. The past three years were no mistake, and she has the spreadsheet to prove it. (Humiliating, now, to think that she planned her entry into Suyin Beifong’s family like a business – from dance student to daughter-in-law, late night TV crap. Three years of notes and calculations, and she’d failed to foresee this one, critical flaw: herself.)

“Junior’ll get through it,” Suyin continues. “We all will. You will.”

(Kuvira should have never brought Baatar Jr. into it. She was doing all right when she was just Suyin’s dance student and teaching assistant, living for Suyin’s smile, working late in the studio until her body was a raw bruise, taking Suyin’s invitations to dinner with the family with awkward grace. But it hadn’t been enough, dancing with Suyin, teaching the younger classes, eating the occasional dinner. Suyin was everything, and Baatar was an easy way into the rest of her life.)

“It’s just how things work out.” Suyin, still talking, her voice so hushed Kuvira can barely hear her over the rain. She says, a moment later: “Where will you go?”

The airport sign flashes by; a white arrow points them toward the terminal. Kuvira feels her throat closing.

“Anywhere,” she says. “Anywhere, I don’t know.”

She’d played Kyoshi in a dance recital, once; the write-up in the Republic City Times had gone on about her control, her poise. Suyin had cut the article out and taped it to one of the studio mirrors.

Kuvira wants that control, now, that poise. But her hand shakes when she opens the car door; an ankle dips beneath her as she steps out onto the slick asphalt of the terminal.

She glances back when she shuts the door. For a desperate moment, she wants Suyin to stop her.

But Suyin is only looking at her, shrunken in the driver’s seat, face as solemn as a child’s.

“Kuvira,” she says, before Kuvira can turn away. She reaches into the glove compartment and removes a clutch purse.

“This is why I was there, at the courthouse,” she says, and holds out a ring.

It is different from the band Baatar Jr. presented Kuvira with. Three strands of metal form a delicate circle; it is crowned in a drop of emerald.

“It used to be my mother’s, then mine,” Suyin says. “I stopped wearing it when my husband died. I wanted – I want you to have it, now.”

“But I didn’t get married,” Kuvira says.

“Oh no.” Suyin’s laugh is breathless and jerky. “This isn’t for that.”

She unbuckles her seatbelt and crawls over far enough to fold Kuvira’s fingers around the ring. She doesn’t pull away.

“Promise me you’ll do something good with yourself,” she says. “Promise me you’ll still dance.”

“Promise  _me_ ,” Kuvira says, “that one day, you’ll take me back.”

Suyin’s fingers clench. “You know I can’t promise that right now.”

“Later?”

Suyin leans in, then, quick as breathing, and kisses Kuvira’s knuckles.

“Maybe,” she says. “But you’ll have to come back first.”

Kuvira touches her cheek. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I will.”

And it is perhaps the first time in three years that she says exactly what she means.


End file.
